Here's some information on a new project of mine. "Google Alert Loop" uses Google's free "Blogger" software and "Google Alerts" to create a webblog that auto-publishes itself based on mentions of specific alert topics sent to the email address specified. The idea is to create a self-perpetuating blog that will publish repeatedly until it begins to publish its own mentions into a continuous cycle. The project attempts to question the utility of these automated systems such as "Google Alerts" and how they are being used to aggregate and polarize opinions across the Internet.

The Museum of the Moving Image will soon become the latest art institution to incorporate video into its architecture, an initiative very much in line with the museum's mission to advance the public's understanding and appreciation of moving image technologies across multiple platforms. Located in the Queens borough of New York City, the museum is embarking on a $65 million
expansion and renovation, which includes a new glass entrance with a grid of around 240 small video monitors. By entering, "you're literally walking through the image," said architect Thomas Leeser in a talk at a recent celebration of the upcoming expansion, which is scheduled for completion in late 2009. Adding to the permeable effect, the image is broken up by areas of glass between the monitors, which "breaks down the authority of the image and its controlling power," Leeser added.

His firm is known for its progressive use of new media, and the museum's facade is far from the only new video-friendly feature. Inside the lobby, there will be a 50-foot-long wall for projecting moving image, the architect said. An outdoor screening garden and a giant stairway doubling as a mini-amphitheater are just a couple of many other enticing new additions. "We wanted to move away from the idea that the museum's just about film," Leeser explained.
"This is an opportunity to grow in new media." The museum will partially close after March 23 for the construction (though it will still offer screenings in various other locations); the new high-tech incarnation will open in late 2009. With so many institutions undergoing identity changes through their renovation projects, we await to see how the newly reformed Museum of the Moving Image will support moving image practice, as it intersects with architecture, digital technologies and the diverse ...

Listening Post is a 'dynamic portrait' of online communication, displaying uncensored fragments of text, sampled in real-time, from public internet chatrooms and bulletin boards. Artists Mark Hansen and Ben Rubin have divided their work into seven separate 'scenes' akin to movements in a symphony. Each scene has its own 'internal logic', sifting, filtering and ordering the text fragments in different ways.

By pulling text quotes from thousands of unwitting contributors' postings, Listening Post allows you to experience an extraordinary snapshot of the internet and gain a great sense of the humanity behind the data.

Online quarterly art journal Vague Terrain announced the release of its latest issue titled "Rise of the VJ" this week. Vague Terrain pairs academically-minded criticism and interviews with artist's projects and/or documentation. In the past, the non-profit publication has featured important and timely topics such as Minimalism, Generative Art, Locative Media, and Sample Culture. Their new issue takes stock of the contemporary field of VJing by showcasing a variety of artist's videos from the likes of Leeanee Berger, vjzoo, defasten, Kero and Neubau, among others, as long as well as substantial interviews with VJs Solu and Jaygo Bloom. Critics Ryan Stec, Michael Betancourt, and Tim Jaeger investigate the interactive angle of VJing while Lara Houston, Ziv Lazar, Xarene Eskander, and Ana Carvahlo situate VJing historically and socially. - Ceci Moss

"As we walk the streets our bodies pierce magnetic fields." So begins artist Ricardo Miranda Zuniga's statement regarding his installation, "On Transmitting Ideology" at Philadelphia alternative art space, Vox Populi. This poetic preface underscores the ubiquity of radio waves, in our world, and the potential power of transmission. For while many of the powerful states and dictators Zuniga's work critiques use the airwaves as a means of broadcasting political dogma, the artist takes the space back in his own transmissions. For the show at Vox Populi, he will present an installation of wooden guns in which are embedded radios "broadcasting declarations on freedom and transformation in our society." The AK-47s and Uzis crafted by Zuniga take aim at the mass media and their role in disseminating ideology. This installation is accompanied by a screening of two new video works "that question the outcome of popular notions of freedom, liberty, and the power of capital." Both pieces touch on the political and personal struggles associated with immigration. Carreta Nagua, Siglo 21 (2007) is an animated narrative that also addresses aging and cultural and familial loss through the perspective of two aging TV superheroes, voiced by the artist's parents, and El Rito Apasionado (2007) "takes place in a hotel room where three Guevarrian Neo-Marxist Latino Terror Revolutionaries from Cuba, Nicaragua and Mexico gather to prepare an act against the history of U.S. intervention." Together, these projects exemplify Zuniga's forte for not only performing powerful interventions, but also interrogating the rhetoric of interventionist art and actions. "On Transmitting Ideology" will be open March 7-30. - Marisa Olson

Finishing Funds provides media and new media artists with grants up to $2,500 to help with the completion of diverse and innovative moving-image and sonic art projects, and works for the Web and new technologies. Eligible forms include film and video as single or multiple channel presentation, computer-based moving-imagery and sound works, installations and performances, interactive works and works for new technologies, DVD, multimedia and the Web. We also support new media, and interactive performance. Work must be surprising, creative and approach the various media as art forms; all genres are eligible, including experimental, narrative and documentary art works. Individual artists can apply directly to the program and do not need a sponsoring organization. Applicants must be residents of New York State; undergraduate students are not eligible. The application requires a project description, resume and support materials, including a sample of the proposed project. Selection is made by a peer review panel. About $25,000 is awarded each year. Announcement is made in early June.

The program is supported in part by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a public agency, and by mediaThe foundation.

Jennifer Dalton's work very often takes up the art world as its subject matter. Art about art--and the world that revolves around it--can often be cheeky at best, but Dalton manages to pull it off with grace, wit, and originality. She also tends to merge newer and more traditional media in doing so, ranging from internet art to paintings to temporary sculptures. On March 8, Brooklyn-based alternative art space Smack Mellon will open a solo show of her work, entitled "Jennifer Dalton is a Scientist--Not!". This moniker comes from an entry written by a gallery visitor on one of the surveys Dalton facilitated over the last year, in preparation for the show. As the gallery notes, the project puts a unique spin on the concept of site-specific art by revolving the work around the space's audience. The show will include a Powerpoint-style DVD infographically presenting the results of a survey entitled What is the Art World Thinking? (2007-Ongoing), in which "this particular slice of New York's art-going public has been invited to take a short anonymous survey consisting of a few simple questions on topics ranging from art to feminism to philanthropy to politics." The results of a previous poll, entitled How do Artists Live (2006) will also be presented in a slide show, along with a new "'insta-survey" asking viewers to respond to a pressing question by taking a candy." These questionnaires raise interesting unspoken questions about the attention spans and consumptive habits of contemporary artists and patrons, as well as the lack of demographic information we have about these individuals, despite the fact that we now live in what many have called a "database society." If you can't make it to Brooklyn but want to participate in the Q&A festivities, check out Artsurvey ...

"Impermanent Markings" at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery
Opening Reception Thursday, March 6 from 5-8pm.
through April 17

This exhibition seeks to define drawing and the vestiges of the artist's hand in very broad terms: where a drawing can be graceful outlines of charred earth or luminous traced gestures; where sinuous computational paths can be drawings; and where scratched lines can express the creative process itself. Mark making will be explored in various ephemeral and impermanent media such as sand, fire, earth, water, code, motion capture, performance, and video.

This past February, renowned experimental composer and harpist Zeena Parkins curated an eclectic series of events at New York's avant-garde music venue The Stone. During the last week, Parkins invited a number of guiding lights from San Francisco's experimental media scene to perform. One highlight was the synthesizer trio Phase Chancellor, an improvisational group who have made memorable, yet infrequent appearances at various art and music spaces since 2005. Comprised of video artist Nate Boyce, musician J. Lesser, and Matmos's M.C. Schmidt, the outfit channels the early investigations in electronic art and video carried out by John Cage, David Tudor, and Nam June Paik. Phase Chancellor distance themselves from their predecessors through their integration of digital technology. The backbone of the performance is Boyce's mesmeric imagery, prepared mostly through the processing software Jitter, but altered and added upon live using a hacked video mixer fed oscillations by his Korg Mono/Poly synth. (In the accompanying video, imploding circles in the center of the image are generated by the arpeggiator function on this device.) The Mono/Poly is also part of the sound mix, to which Lesser and Schmidt contribute a rich counterpoint of electronic textures, avoiding the concept of drone altogether in favor of a perplexing and ever-shifting sonic environment. - Nick Hallett

Electrofringe 2008 is now calling for proposals for this year's festival from artists, media makers, curators, researchers, playful experimenters, enthusiasts, writers and producers.

Electrofringe is a five day festival of electronic arts and culture occurring as part of This Is Not Art in Newcastle Australia. Electrofringe is dedicated to furthering the creative use of technology and electronic art forms with focus upon skills exchange and development. In 2008 Electrofringe is also including a residency program in Newcastle during the lead up the the festival to allow for the creation of site specific work.